Gorillaz

And if time’s elimination
Then we got nothing to lose
Please repeat the message
It’s the music that we choose
Keeping my groove on

“These days everything seems so constructed, so artificial. Even the environment I come from – the indie world – has by now become a product built from scratch, you know? So we thought: let's play their own game, but create something better; something that, even though it's constructed, is actually worthwhile”. It's March 2001 and, while the video for “Clint Eastwood” is filling the schedules of music channels, Damon Albarn blows the lid off the media game, confirming to BBC Radio 1 what's already clear to everyone: he is 2D, the frontman of the cartoon band that also includes three other “animated” characters named Noodle, Murdoc and Russel Hobbs. The idea is as simple as it is brilliant: create a virtual group in which the music goes hand in hand with the visual side, the comics drawn by Jamie Hewlett. It looks like a game, and indeed it is one, but it's also a very serious matter. So serious, in fact, that it will become the most prolific and successful project among the many set up over the years by the singer of Blur.

Blur, precisely. The fact that, from the mid-Nineties onward, Damon Albarn wanted to shake off a whole series of things – britpop and the revivalism more or less inherent to his nature, the battles and the various rivalries manufactured by the music press, and so on – is clear from the direction the London band's discography took. “Blur” and “13” mark a decisive shift in the Blur sound, effectively sealing the end of one era and opening a new one. Perhaps, though, that wasn't enough: by the end of the millennium Albarn was ready to channel his authorial talent into something completely new, breaking free of the constraints imposed by his role as frontman of one of the most important and high-profile bands of the era. His meeting with Hewlett and the close friendship that followed – the two would even decide to share an apartment/creative studio in Notting Hill – proved decisive in steering that tangle of ideas in a different, in its own way unprecedented, direction.

Gorillaz made their debut on November 27, 2000 on Parlophone with the EP "Tomorrow Comes Today". Four tracks, including the title track and also "Rock the House". On the cover, sketched against a blue background, the four Gorillaz already appear, the same characters who a few months later would climb aboard the camouflage jeep with which the project would make its definitive breakthrough. Fifteen tracks recorded and refined over a year and a half between Jamaica and England — with Dan The Automator playing a crucial production role — already contain everything we need and would come to know: not only the ability to blend different musical genres into a substantially new formula, but also the vision of an open project, indeed one wide open to outside contributions: collaboration and cross-contamination as a constant source of vital energy. Traits that Gorillaz have never lost, if anything amplifying them from one work to the next.

"Gorillaz" is an album completely free in style. Albarn finally gives vent to the most disparate ideas swirling in his head: the primal one is undoubtedly making songs blended with hip-hop and dub, without worrying about what the outcome or the public's response might be. The work is pervaded by a playful, positive feeling mixed with an ostentatious naïveté, reverberated by the project's cartoonish dimension, in which every character takes on its own physiognomy and characterization. The emblem of this professional, studied yet carefree approach is precisely "Clint Eastwood", by far the most celebrated hit of Gorillaz, whose backing track is nothing more than the "Rock 1" preset of the Suzuki Omnichord, a gadget dredged up straight from the 80s: that simple backing, over which Albarn's sung parts and Del The Funky Homosapien's rapped verses take turns, would become one of the most recognizable anthems of the new millennium.

Continuing down the list of singles, the plurality of genres and options Gorillaz put on the table is already evident: the brooding "Tomorrow Comes Today" unfolds over vaguely trip-hop rhythms, as does "New Genius (Brother)"; "19-2000", which immerses itself in retro-videogame funk atmospheres, features the voice of Miho Hatori and the collaboration of Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz of the Tom Tom Club on backing vocals and bongos respectively: the song would find further glory in Soulchild's superb remix; "Rock the House" reveals the project's rap soul, not without some apocryphal nods to the Beastie Boys. Among the most successful tracks, one cannot fail to mention the brazen, irresistible rock of "5/4" or the suitably Britishized reggae of "Slow Country", with Albarn following in the footsteps of his beloved Specials, or again a "Punk" that appears to be the only possible link to the Blur sound (and indeed, here comes Dave Rowntree on drums, just as in the electric bacchanal of "M1 A1") arm in arm, perhaps, with "Re-Hash". Finally, the exotic experiment of "Latin Simone (Que Pasa Contigo)", sung entirely by Ibrahim Ferrer, ultimately the project's first opening toward world music.

Not everything, it must be said, is perfectly in focus: the rarefied "Man Research (Clapper)" and "Sound Check (Gravity)", for instance, add little to the album's overall economy, so much so that that vein would be almost entirely abandoned in subsequent works. But this too is part of the game: experimenting, testing oneself, stepping outside the comfort zone, expressing oneself in total freedom. "When we made the first album," Hewlett told Rolling Stone on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of "Gorillaz"'s release, "there was a feeling that it was some kind of joke, or a product for kids, and that nobody really took it seriously. The music industry liked the songs, but didn't grasp the point of the animated characters; on the contrary, younger listeners were thrilled by them and, through the cartoons, found their way into the music. And through the music, they discovered artists they would otherwise never have known." For once, the pop revolution was televised.

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25/10/2026